Brazil’s Covid Crisis Is a Warning to the Whole World, Scientists Say - The New York Times

"Just over 5.8 million Brazilians — roughly 2.6 percent of the population — had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine as of Tuesday, according to the health ministry. Only about 1.5 million had received both doses. The country is currently using the Chinese-made CoronaVac — which laboratory tests suggest is less effective against P.1 than against other variants — and the one made by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca."

Oh, great, so Coronavac (by Sinovac) is what we are getting here. P.1 is the Brazilian variant and you can bet we have plenty of that spreading around, seeing that we are in the neighborhood and there are direct flights between here and there. There hasn't been much information available lately about how the variants are spreading here. There was a bit of fuss when the first case of the UK variant arrived, but the authorities have been quiet about the South African and Brazilian variants. I wonder if they are even bothering to test samples for the variants.

We are back over 4,500 new cases today. 73% of the Metropolitan Region will be back in phase 2, weekend quarantine by Saturday. Our neighbor municipalities to the north and south could not escape this time. They had been in phase 3. I forsee a new lockdown for the Metropolitan Region and I wonder how much the vacation permits they were giving out over the summer had to do with it. We were responsible and decided it was not the right time for a vacation. But, we will be locked down with the rest of them.